Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The following morning I went ashore alone. Gavin was in a funk, and I needed to walk
alone. I decided to splash out and buy some bacon. For some reason I was craving bacon;
we had been silenced by the smell earlier of some frying from one of the boats on the river.
It was something we had not had in a long time. I decided to try a new store at the east end
of the town and walked into a homey looking little deli. A large, red-faced man appeared,
looming over the clean stone counter, “Good day mate, whatchta need then, sport?”
“Hi, do you have any bacon?” I asked hopefully.
“Sure do, 'alf a pound be enough?” He brandished a prepackaged bag.
“That will be great,” I replied, opening my wallet and praying that I had enough in there
for this extravagant treat.
“So where you from then, mate?” asked the red-faced man.
I told him briefly where I was from and asked him if he knew anyone who needed work
doing.
“Do any painting, bud?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, my brother and I most certainly do painting.”
It turned out that he was a farmer who had fallen on hard times and had had a big life
change. He had opted out of farming and had moved into town where he and his wife had
opened up a little deli. He still owned his farm, just out of town, and had it listed on the mar-
ket. He wanted the farmhouse and all the outbuildings painted. God was smiling broadly
on us that day. Guess I gotta buy bacon more often, I thought, as I had raced back to the
boat to tell Gavin the good tidings.
And so it was that Gavin and I moved off Déjà vu for a fortnight, whisked away to a very
large farm on the outskirts of town by a kindly farmer who gave us the run of his house,
wood stove, and chickens for the duration of the repainting of his farm. He lent us his old
shotgun with a handful of shells and said when we need to eat some “chook” we were just
to go to the henhouse and take a potshot through the fence at whatever took our fancy! We
soon were up to our eyeballs on the farm, painting day in and day out. It was a huge job.
Unsupervised and paid once a week on a Friday, the jovial, big-hearted farmer would come
out armed with food, drinks, and the very decent week's wages.
We soon discovered the wild ducks that would land noisily on the large lake on the farm.
We would take turns early in the morning, stalking this flock of ducks as they swept
through the dew laden blue gum grove. Just before they landed on the steaming, cold, grey
water, a loud report from the ancient shotgun was sure to bring down a bag of these tasty
birds as the gang of wild kangaroos hopped off terrified into the Australian scrub.
